Prompt fic collection
by Izumi1909
Summary: A collection of short fics written from prompts
1. Sleep

**Note:** I ran out of ideas and the sequels to existing works need more time, so I'm trying writing from prompts.

 **Sleep**

 **Prompt:** "I was sure that rotten boy was sleeping all night."

Mikkel claimed Reynir had always had trouble sleeping during the night and, what had happened had probably made the phenomenon worse, hence explaining his irritability as of late. There was one problem in that explanation: if Reynir really had trouble sleeping, Emil should have, by all means, witnessed it by now. Each and every time he woke up from his own nightmares, it was to Reynir breathing the way soundly sleeping people usually did. As far as he was concerned, Reynir was sleeping through the night, while he wasn't. The only thing that kept him from complaining too much about it was that Reynir's breathing contributed to the soothing ambient noise that helped him go back to sleep if he focused on it long enough.

How did he always manage to bump his head on Emil's bunk when he woke up after dream walking? Reynir always half-expected to hear Emil's sleeping voice complain each time this happened, but he fortunately seemed to be a sound enough sleeper to never be bothered, no matter how many times it happened. It was probably for the best. After he had made sure via Tuuri that Emil knew he hadn't minded the manhandling from that first day, they really hadn't had anything to say to each other. However, Emil was friends with Lalli, and the latter's relationship with Reynir was quite complicated. Lalli didn't like him as person, but follow-ups on what they had planned in the dreamscape the few times they had been asleep at the same time frequently happened in the physical world. A lot of it was communicating about things only they could see using drawings and gestures, resulting in a strange cycle of understanding each other in spite of the language barrier and one of them getting frustrated with the other's lack of understanding. Emil was a regular silent, but very visibly and understandably baffled, witness of these moments. After Tuuri's troll bite, the yelling had become more frequent than the understanding. Now, Emil probably viewed him as the guy who kept yelling at his friend. Last thing Reynir needed was to become the guy waking him up at night in addition to that.


	2. Early-bird contact

**Early-bird contact**

 **Prompt:** "The lady was breathing."

The woman they had found adrift on what was left of a door turned out to be alive, and was taken to quarantine. She woke during the night, but nobody could understand what she was saying, and she didn't seem to understand a single word spoken to her either. One of the doctors diagnosed brain damage that kept her from speaking and understanding people correctly. The condition hadn't faded away by the time the quarantine had ended, which not only made everyone fear it would be permanent, but kept anyone from having an idea of who the woman was and where she came from. All they knew is that she wasn't from Dalsnes. Someone had shown her a map hoping that she could point to where she was coming from, but all she had done was look at it with a baffled expression on her face. With no idea of what else to do, she was given a room and work in one of the farms.

Sigurd took upon himself to try communicating with her. He found out her name was Frida. Within a few days, they reached enough of an understanding that he decided to try finding out the exact reason she had been unable to show where she came from on the map.  
-Home. Not on map.  
So that was the problem. Sigurd immediately realized that if she wasn't from Norway, what the doctor had mistaken for brain damage could be something else entirely. The brain damage had been diagnosed in part due to the people who had met Swedes and Danes before couldn't understand her, but he remembered that there was a fourth country in the world, whose people were supposed to speak a strange language. He proudly showed her a map of Finland, but she told him it wasn't there either. She asked for other maps. Sigurd didn't understand. There were only three countries with non-infected people in them besides Norway. They eventually found an old map that showed more places. On one of them, Frida pointed at a large island to the north-west to where Dalsnes was.

Sigurd took Frida and the map to his parents, and asked them about the island. His mother rambled on how she had made fun of the place for closing its borders when the Rash had come, but in hindsight she suspected its inhabitants to have known something others didn't. She also went on to tell him about how the island's habitants had started sinking boats that came too close to their coasts, so people had started avoiding the place and its waters. Sigurd's father noticed the face he was making and the awkward glances he was giving Frida, and got his mother to stop. It quickly turned out that nobody in Dalsnes had ever met an Icelander before or could speak the language. This, added to the fact that the whole country had isolated itself, had resulted in nobody considering the possibility that Frida could come from there. A few weeks later, an old lady from another settlement heard that Dalsnes was looking for an Icelandic speaker and offered her help. Thanks to her, they found out that Iceland was still wary of boats from other countries and would probably sink any boat attempting to bring Frida home. All they could do is wait, and hope for a safer way to eventually come about, just like Frida had. By the time Iceland abolished its isolation policy and made official first contact with Norway, Sigurd and Frida were married and had a young son. Dalsnes had become Frida's home.

Sigrun sighed:  
-Nice try grandma, I'm still not learning Icelandic. Only brainiacs and traders need it, and I'm neither.  
Fortunately, Frida had had plenty of willing students, including her own son and Sigurd's friend Trond, over the years. It was still a pity that her own granddaughter showed so little interest in her native language.


	3. Uncertain future

**Uncertain future**

 **Prompt:** "In the near future, he was starting school."

Emil was going to have to finish his education in public school, there was no way around it. His former private tutor had suggested that he simply go to school in Östersund, but he saw no reason not to go in Mora, where at least, the level wouldn't be that much lower than what he was used to. It would also be a better place to find a job paying well enough to start rebuilding the family fortune. Torbjörn and Siv had young children to provide for, so their priority had been to find a job at all. Come to think of it, he wasn't quite sure what kind of job he was going to take now that working for his father was no longer an option. After thinking for a few moments, he figured it out. It was perfect for him! He was going to be a private tutor! As long as the child was younger that he currently was, he would be able to provide him or her with a better education than what the public system had to offer. He was going to need to find out how one got hired as a private tutor, however. Maybe Torbjörn and Siv knew people who would be interested in hiring him once he graduated.

The train Emil was riding got close enough to Mora that he could see the outer walls. He'd have the rest of the week-end to unpack, then he'd start taking classes the next Monday. Soon enough, the train came into the station and Emil got off, went through decontamination, then went looking for the person from the school who was supposed to be waiting for him. He eventually saw a young man around his age holding a piece of apparently used cardboard with his name on it. If it weren't for the seldom seen black hair and glasses, he would have completely blended into the crowd. Emil walked up to him and they shook hands:  
-I'm Sven, your roommate.  
-My what?  
-Roommate. We'll be living in the same boarding room.  
Emil was outraged:  
-I wasn't told I'd have to share!  
-I'm not happy about it either. The only reason I've been alone in the room so far is that there was an uneven number of boarders this year, and I preferred being alone if I could. Now, try not losing sight of me. I'm not holding your hand and Mora has twenty-two times your hometown's population.

Sven started walking and Emil followed as much as he could. They went right past the horse-drawn carriages lined up in front of the station.  
-Isn't there a carriage waiting for us?  
Sven didn't turn back to answer:  
-The school isn't that far, and walking is good.  
After about ten minutes of following Sven, Emil decided that they probably had very different ideas of what "not that far" meant, and that by "twenty-two", Sven had probably meant something closer to "twenty-two hundred". By the time they reached the school, Emil was winded and the arm with which he had been carrying his suitcase hurt horribly.  
Sven brought him to a two-floor building:  
-This is where the boarding rooms are.  
Emil followed him inside, only to find out that their room was actually on the upper floor. Fortunately, Sven finally realized he'd been carrying a suitcase the entire time and helped him take it upstairs.

However, as soon as they got inside the room, Sven went to sit at one of the two small desks in the room, opened a book and told him to not make too much noise while unpacking. Emil found some uniforms in the closet on his side of the room. He protested at the "large" label still on them, but Sven's only reply was to tell him to try them on and inform him that the medium would be even tighter on him. Large turned out to be fine after all. Once he was done unpacking, he looked over Sven's shoulder, and noticed the book he was reading was in Icelandic.  
-Studying Icelandic?  
-No, this is material for one of the assignments that happens to be in Icelandic.  
Emil's response was to quickly look through the pile of school books that had been left for him on his own desk, and let out a sigh of relief when they turned out to all have titles in Swedish. However, upon a second look, one of them seemed to be a Swedish-Icelandic dictionary. He suddenly had a memory of his tutor, a few years back, trying get him interested in learning Icelandic.  
-Uh… how much Icelandic are we expected to know?  
-The usual one of publicly-educated academics. It shouldn't be too hard for you. Someone told me you had private tutor.  
-Actually, I had a very personalized curriculum, and I didn't see the use of learning Icelandic when it was offered to me, so I don't know any. Is… this going to be a problem?  
Sven rolled his eyes.

xxxx

-I'd quit academia if I were you.  
Emil sighed at Sven's comment, that was too close to what he been hearing from some teachers for comfort:  
-Not you too.  
-It is precisely because of the little loyalty I owe you by sharing a room with you that I'm telling you that. You only needing to catch up on the subjects you didn't study during your childhood would have been one thing. But you are also dismal at picking up Icelandic and you keep insisting that you know better than the teachers concerning the subjects you _did_ study.  
-But I _do_ know better than the teachers.  
-You don't. You think so only because your family used to be able to afford you that illusion. You no longer have money. You'll have to be either likable or useful for anyone to want to keep you around. This gives you two solutions, as far as I see it. The first is that you at least start showing the teachers some respect. The second is that you leave and find yourself a profession that is of better use of the talents that you actually have.  
-But I need to stay in academia. I won't be taken seriously as a private tutor if I don't graduate, and I need a job in which I'll make a lot of money with little effort.  
- _That_ 's your idea of a private tutor's job? Whichever child you would have ended up teaching is probably better off if you give up on that career.  
-So what do you suggest I do? Killing trolls and tending the fields are commoner jobs.  
-And the mere fact that you need to come here to finish your schooling means that you are a "commoner" now. If you haven't gotten used to that, I suggest you get started right now. It will make your life easier.  
How did he dare? Why was he even listening to him? Emil stormed out of the room.

On second thought, he should have probably taken a coat with him. It was still fall, but it was getting late. He didn't feel like going back to the school quite yet, but he decided to keep moving to avoid freezing. After a while, he started feeling tired, and decided to try heading back. He realized he didn't know where he was, which meant he had no idea whether he was getting closer to the school or further away from it. He decided to try finding Torbjörn and Siv's house, in case it was closer to where he was. He could always go back to the school in the morning.

When he regained awareness, he was sleeping in a bed, and he vaguely recognized the ceiling of Torbjörn and Siv's guest room. He quickly realized that Siv was in the room as well, relived to see him awake. She told him he had knocked at the house's door and collapsed almost as soon as he had been invited in. Emil didn't remember any of it. After a few questions concerning how he was feeling, he had a meal in bed while telling Siv about what had happened earlier in the day. She listened while he told her how bad things were currently going at school. Unfortunately, she joined the ranks of those suggesting that _he_ was the one who needed to change his attitude. Concerning Sven and the teachers, all she acknowledged was that they could have been "a little" gentler in expressing their thoughts about him. At one point, she let out a sigh of frustration:  
-You say you want to become a private tutor. Did _your_ private tutor choose what he was teaching you?  
-Of course not, I did.  
-So, if the child you were teaching or the child's parents wished for a curriculum you didn't approve of, what would you do?  
-I'd just tell them it's a bad idea and do things my way.  
-They'd probably fire you if you did that. Whichever job you'll take, you'll need to follow other people's wishes to an extent, whether you actually want to do so or not. That roommate of yours has a point about you showing a little respect to your teachers. If you can't listen to the people teaching you, you won't last long in any job, even if you otherwise have the skills for it. It's getting late. How about you sleep on this and we talk again about this tomorrow, when both of us are rested?  
-But tomorrow is a school day. I'll have to wake up early and go back.  
-Do you have any idea of what being out in the cold without a coat as long you were can do to your mind and body? You should stay in bed at least one day before going back.  
-But I feel fine now. Just a little tired because it's late.  
-You told me you didn't remember coming here just a few minutes ago. This means you need much more rest than you realize. Don't worry about the school, I called them after you came here.  
She _did_ know more than him about medical matters. He was too tired to continue protesting anyway.

xxxx

A couple days later, Sven looked up from the book he had been reading as Emil finished getting dressed:  
-You're already better? You may actually be fit for the army if you recover this fast from wandering around in the cold without a coat.  
-And whose fault was _that_?  
-I checked outside for you when it started getting cold and told the people who needed to know of your absence. The dorm supervisor a got a call from your aunt a little before curfew and told me where you were. I don't see anything I could have done after that. I'm not going to apologize for what I told you the other day. I've heard plenty of other people speak words along those lines. They think they are doing you a favor by not telling them in front of you for some reason. It's just a lighter version of the illusion your parents used to be able to pay for as far as I'm concerned, and I don't get how they expect you to change your attitude to match the situation if you're not fully aware of it. If you don't like hearing this, proving them wrong is your responsibility and nobody else's. Do you think you can do that?  
Emil thought of the answer for longer than he expected to, but decided to go with a faint "Yes". Sven opened the door to their room:  
-In that case, start by not showing up in class late with an empty stomach, which will likely happen if you leave this room too long after I do.  
Emil grabbed his books for the day and went out with him. He was going to give academia one last try, and maybe consider that career change idea if it ended up not working out.


	4. A lifetime's opponent

**A lifetime's opponent**

 **Prompt:** "I have a tale about fear, getting old, and a plague - a story no one knows."

I was special from a very young age. When I tell this to other people, they think I mean my peculiar personality, or my magic. It is more than that. I have asked every single mage I have met in my long life about it. I now know that I'm one of the very few aware of its existence. The only other one is Onni, as he became able to sense it little after having to flee with the two younger ones. But even he doesn't quite realize what it really is. He only knows it's dangerous and that he needs to keep himself and the younger ones out of its reach. It is whimsical. Each time I fail at destroying it, it looks for the children for a while, but grows bored after being unable to find them for some amount of time. If I stop trying to destroy it, my death will make it the constant companion of a newborn mage. Everyone around that newborn will only see it receiving an inherently strong luonto, rather than its rightful luonto alongside something else that shouldn't be there. If that newborn grows to have children of its own, it will attract actual powerful luontos to those children to avoid any discrepancy in power between parent and child. It will seemingly be a blessing, but in reality, the equivalent of a farmer coddling the very cows they intend to slaughter later on. I can't let this happen to another family. I have to be the one to make it vanish from this world, regardless of the high price of trying and failing.

Dad, mom, aunt Kaino, uncle Eino and aunt Tuuli were already adults when _it_ first appeared in this world. They took a long time to accept that I could do magic. Veeti had always been an adult to me, just one who looked much younger than the others. I only really understood he had still been a child around the time I was born when he became the first in the family willing to believe in its existence. Some of the Old World machines told stories. The family had owned one of them when Veeti was younger, and it had once told him a story about a "witch" who would cast a spell on all the children of a village. The parents of the children, who didn't know of the witch, would mistake the spell for a sickness and didn't know what to do to make them better. Eventually, only one little girl in the village was not sick, because she was a witch herself. She was able to find the evil witch and kill her.  
-Maybe the Rash is actually a spell like the one from the story, and that… thing you see in your dreams is the witch casting it.  
It eventually turned out that some of those able to do magic could still catch the Rash, and that those unable to catch it weren't always powerful enough to qualify as mages. As for everything else, Veeti was strangely close to the truth for someone trying to make sense of his little cousin's strange dreams with a half-remembered story a machine had told him long ago.

The Rash has a mind behind it, a powerful one. It overpowers the mind of those changed by the disease, in addition to changing their body. It can't stop itself from propagating, yet is aware of its victim's suffering. It has tried to destroy itself in the past, to no avail. All it can do is pick a single mage, make them more powerful than they would have naturally been, and hope they find a way to destroy it. It decided to pick me, as I was to receive my luonto right when it had decided on this course of action. However, for something that wishes for its own death, it has a formidable survival instinct, that is impossible to beat once it kicks in. The challenge is hence to kill a being that is near-omniscient by human standards, with the price of a failed attempt being the death of a few complete strangers. The attempts that come the closest to success are those who frustrate it, and make it lash out, the most. If the person who dies of the Rash itself or one of its puppets is not a complete stranger to me, I know I've come closer than usual. Eleven years ago was the closest I ever got. It got back at me by causing an outbreak on the island on which I lived, only thinking of having my grandchildren "miraculously" survive in a moment of clarity, as to not completely run out of people to take away from me, should I fail because of one, tiny, easy to see mistake ever again.

Tuuri is gone. So I did come close enough that last time.  
-It's really too bad. She amused me, thinking that she and her brother hadn't gotten sick in that outbreak because some benevolent being was looking out for her. But she was the easiest to reach when I had to pick.  
I have to keep trying. I'm running out of time.


	5. A very special classroom

**Note:** This is an _Assassination Classroom_ AU, and I wrote it assuming the reader knows about a certain twist from later in the story. The bottom line is that if you have no idea who Aguri Yukimura is, I'd advise to not read any further if you don't want to be spoiled.

 **A very special classroom**

 **Prompt:** "I've got my books - now I'm ready."

-Hey, I brought those books I told you about yesterday. I'll just leave them here so you can look at them later.  
Tuuri put the books on his desk with her usual cheerful smile, and skipped back to her seat. The difference between the smile she showed when she was genuinely being nice and the one she showed when she had any kind of ulterior motive was smaller than it used to be, but still there, and big enough to be noticeable to someone who had younger siblings of their own. But it also caused the young woman to remind him of the fact that he would never get to see any of his younger siblings ever again. They wouldn't recognize him if they saw him anyway. If only he hadn't been desperate enough for a job to accept being a test subject in that shady government laboratory. He noticed the covers of both the books that Tuuri had brought him looked quite new for those of items that she was supposed to just happen to own, and that Reynir could be quite crafty with the special material that was harmful to him, but might as well be rubber to ordinary humans. He brushed one of his upper tentacles against the spines and covers of both books, but nothing happened. Physical contact with the special material usually made his skin melt.

The bell signaling the beginning of the class rang. The roll call happened without anyone making a move. He still remembered the first one that had happened after Sigrun had taught the students how to use guns. All twenty-six of them had tried to shoot him with special material pellets at the same time, but he had been able to dodge them all, thanks to the sheer speed at which he was now able to move. They had given up after everyone had run out of ammo. First period of the current day was math, and he decided to start it with a problem that would leave him with time to look at one of the books that Tuuri had brought. He opened the first book, and started reading it. It was quite interesting, indeed. Um… he had never considered that aspect of the issue.

He suddenly had a new issue to address. He was about to grab the handkerchief he usually used to pull special material weapons out of people's hands, only to realize that it was gone from its usual spot. Thinking fast, he decided to settle for gabbing Lalli himself by the waist, hoping the surprise alone would be enough to make Lalli drop the special material knife he was holding. True to himself, Lalli held onto the knife, and promptly used it to slice off the part of the tentacle holding him. The loss of his tentacle slowed him down, but he was still more than fast enough to dodge Sigrun's own attempt at stabbing him. Just as it happened, he remembered where he was keeping his other handkerchiefs, grabbed one out of his desk drawer with his still-intact upper tentacle and used it to grab Sigrun and Lalli's knives in one swipe.

Lalli response was to walk back to his seat, and the math problem. To think that Tuuri had pleaded with Sigrun to get him transferred to another class, back when the students had first been told that their new teacher needed to be killed within the following year, and that they were going to be drafted into the effort. Lalli was now one of Sigrun's favorites, and Tuuri had picked up on his talent sufficiently to have him hold the weapon while she was the one who came up with a plan. Sigrun, meanwhile, gave him a dejected look:  
-You were really about to get yourself stabbed because you got distracted by a _book_? You're kind of lame for a weird monster who's threatening to destroy the planet, Big Guy.  
He moved away from his desk just in time to avoid the spray of special material pellets coming out of the second book Tuuri had left on it, which had suddenly opened on its own while Sigrun was talking to him.

xxxx

Tuuri was tinkering with the fake book's timer at her desk, while Reynir and Emil were tending to the octopus in a big tank in the back of the classroom. Despite the fact that his very existence was meant to be top secret, students of the class had muttered about octopuses in the presence of outside people too many times, and the cover story had ended up being that the class had an _actual_ pet octopus named "Big Guy". While seeing for how long they could convince outsiders that they had a non-existent pet octopus would have been both amusing and a good way to test everyone's ability to lie convincingly, Sigrun had quickly decided that the lack of actual pet octopuses in the class was too much of a risk, and had gotten "Little Guy" installed in the class overnight. The animal had unfortunately quickly turned into a perfect tool for Sigrun to throw a few jabs at _him_ , but had also fortunately revealed that Emil completely lost his aversion for anything that got his hands dirty when it came to caring for animals. Reynir, meanwhile, had had to move far away from a family farm to attend the school, and was missing the animals. It also gave them something to do together, as each of them being good friends with one of the Hotakainen cousins had put them in the same social circle, but left them with painfully little else to do or talk about when left alone with each other.

Lalli ran into the classroom:  
-Onni had to come by here for work. He wants to see the fake Big Guy. We need to hide the real Big Guy and all the killing things.  
In a split second, he had re-arranged the teacher's desk so it looked like Sigrun had been the one using it, and hidden himself in the secret storage room for the special material weapons. Not exactly the safest place for him, but it was the room that was best hidden from people who weren't part of the class. He heard a knock on the trap door:  
-Hey, do you mind if I come in? Onni used to be one of my uncle's subcontractors, so things tend to get more awkward than they need to when we're in the same room.  
His first instinct had been to tell Emil to go hide where he would have hidden if that secret room hadn't existed, in case someone from outside the class came looking for him. Letting Emil in would put one of the students who was the most interested in the hefty reward for killing him in the same room as him and plenty of tools to do exactly that. However, Emil's words intrigued him, so he permitted him to enter.

Onni looked at the aquarium:  
-So this is the famous octopus. He's a big guy, indeed. It must cost quite a lot to feed him.  
Sigrun answered the best schoolteacher voice she could muster:  
-A shrimp breeding pool was being set up for the school as a learning tool around the time we got him. We don't actually spend too much extra money on that.  
Even though it was a private school, it was still a relatively affordable one. Yet, the higher-ups had insisted on installing a regular food source for the octopus, and it had been very hard to explain to parents or whoever else was paying for tuition. On that subject, Sigrun realized that the Hotakainen family must have bounced back from Onni losing his biggest client a couple years ago quite fast for both Tuuri and Lalli to be attending the school. Sigrun decided to keep the question for later, as she was currently supposed to play the role of a teacher keeping an eye on the students who were spending the second half of the lunch break in the classroom. And resist the urge to pocket half the Viking-themed trinkets Big Guy had left on the desk to take them home before he put them back to wherever he had been hiding them so far.

-Their family is pretty much used to function in the wake of a mishap. Our family business collapsing right when theirs was starting to do well is only the most recent of them. When all the other subcontractors were still bummed out by the loss of my uncle's business, Onni was the only one able to think straight enough to notice there was a way they could help each other if they acted fast. The arrangement he offered kept him and a few other subcontractors from falling prey to people taking advantage of the situation. They are all doing quite well, now. But considering you're here, their next mishap may not be that far away.  
He didn't point out to Emil that he was in a good position to try fixing that. Whether he made use of the fact before they both needed to go back to class or not, he was going to learn a valuable lesson.  
-Is this the reason Lalli was never properly examined until recently?  
Emil stayed silent for a few moments before speaking:  
-I never really thought of that. My impression was that it was just routine for the teacher we had before you to make sure whatever had gotten us sent to her class wasn't part of a bigger problem. She talked one-on-one with me when I came here, too. But when she talked with Lalli…  
In his mind, Emil's voice shifted to another one, telling the exact same story, from a different perspective:  
-From what I can tell, his behavior just kept getting explained away by whichever tragedy was the most recent. I don't think someone has actually listened to him in his entire life, and he was having great trouble putting his thoughts into words while I was speaking with him. He and one of the students already in the class turned out to know each other, but…  
With some effort, his mind managed to shift back to Emil's voice in the present time:  
-I had been quite mean to him at an office party back before my uncle got into trouble, so I went to apologize to him. Next thing I knew, I was the only person in the entire class to be somewhat friendly to him, and I couldn't bring myself to leave him alone up until Tuuri got transferred here.  
He already knew that Tuuri was a more recent transfer than Lalli; both of them had started on the same day.

-Ah, don't worry about this this. I quickly figured out that Tuuri had let her grades drop on purpose because she was worried about Lalli being here. Many of the kids are here because they are having actual trouble with the schoolwork. Having her here lets more of them get help at the same time. This class is intended to help them bounce back, after all.  
This was the official reason the class existed, but Sigrun didn't buy it. As far as she could tell, its true purpose was to sweep the students that risked giving a bad image of the school under the rug, all while continuing to collect their tuition fees. The practice of having the students help each other on their weak subjects, while the teacher tended to those who were having trouble across the board hadn't been as much a program as a necessity. The principal was just lucky that there were a few students who had actually been stimulated by such an environment, rather than seeing it as a blatant sign the school had just plain given up on them. However, she was quite sure that the fact that the _other_ octopus-like creature could move at high speed and was surprisingly dedicated to actually teaching his students was the only reason they were currently getting any kind of real help. Onni spoke:  
-About that. I've been told that you are refusing to let Tuuri help Lalli, and instead making her tutor some country boy. This is obviously not working well for either of them. Arguments are breaking out in our household much more frequently then they used to. Would you mind letting them work together, at least from time to time, to see if it helps things?  
Pleading for Lalli to be transferred to another class had been only one of the many ways Tuuri had tried to take Lalli's activities in the class in her own hands, and had all around acted as if the fact that she had gotten herself transferred to the class for the sole purpose of "making things easier for him" automatically entitled her to have her requests fulfilled. Big Guy's response had been to have her tutor Reynir and limit her hovering over Lalli as much as he could, to get an idea of how Lalli dealt with things on his own. Putting them in a situation in which they were no longer obligated towards each other, but in a position to see each other interact with other people and their schoolwork, had made their relationship more complicated than it had been before. They were both finding out new things about each other every day, but at the same time were having trouble shaking off the habits that had engrained themselves over their entire childhoods. Many of those habits were now in that difficult limbo where the old way of doing things was agreed upon to be wrong, but the new way had yet to be completely worked out. It was most certainly following them at home, and she couldn't blame Onni to be taken aback if he was used to them at least outwardly getting along. Unfortunately, their cooperation from just this morning concerned something that they weren't supposed to talk about with outsiders to the class. She suddenly realized that she had the perfect answer for Onni:  
-You know what? There happens to be projects on which the students will need to work in pairs coming up soon. I could have them work on theirs together. If they don't mind, of course.  
Tuuri and Lalli both nodded from behind Onni's back, each of them looking somewhat sincere. The first bell for the end of the lunch break rang. Sigrun was very happy to hear it:  
-On that subject, class is going to resume in five minutes. We are a little far away from the main building, so I suggest you get going if someone is expecting you after the lunch break is over.

They had now been sitting in the dark room in silence for a decent amount of time, and Emil had yet to make a move. He knew because he had been monitoring the room all this time. Fortunately, he had found the perfect way to keep himself busy. The first end of lunch bell rang, prompting Emil to speak.  
-Sigrun will probably use this to kick Onni out of the class if he hasn't left on his own yet. Would you mind going out first to make sure that he's actually left? You can be in and out before he even notices you're there, right?  
-Of course I can. In return, I'll just ask you to please watch your language.  
During the brief instant for which the room's trap door had to be open for him to leave, light from outside poured in, showing Emil the dozen of special material grenades – his weapon of choice – that he had silently placed within a literal arm's reach of the young man during their conversation. Emil didn't let a full swear out, at least.

xxxx

The exercise was more complicated than the last one Sigrun had imposed upon them during the previous "Physical Education" session. In pairs of two, they were supposed to "Kill" as many other pairs as possible, while avoiding getting "killed" themselves. Lalli wasn't the only student in the class who was good with a rifle, but the distribution in proficiency was still such that people usually ended up in Lalli's range for an accurate shot before Lalli was in theirs. Tuuri's job consisted mostly of watching out for people coming in from his blind spot. While on lookout, she couldn't help thinking about how Lalli had never done that well at school, and _this_ , of all things, had turned out to be not only what he was good at, but something in which he was better than _her_. The only thing softening the blow was that physical activities had never been her strong suit. She and Reynir had been among the six first to "die" in the two previous exercises similar to this one the class had undergone so far. The second time, the four other "dead" students watching the rest of the exercise unfold had ended up commenting about how "creepy" it was that Lalli had taken so easily to this class they were officially not supposed to have. One of them had gone as far as to outright tell Tuuri that Lalli was probably going to kill both her and Onni without warning someday. Both Sigrun and Big Guy were doing their best to make sure each of them understood the full implications of what they were learning to do, but it had been hard for Tuuri to tell how much of it all Lalli had actually understood. They were forbidden from trying to kill Big Guy if there was any risk of collateral damage that would put someone else's life in danger. Their own friends and family, alongside the personnel and other students of the school, were off-limits as well. Those rules were clear, and Lalli would follow them. But a small part of Tuuri nonetheless had doubts about what would happen if Lalli ran into a complete stranger acting hostile towards him, and he couldn't run away. She couldn't believe how radically the exact reason she didn't want Lalli walking around alone had changed over just a few weeks. She suddenly noticed signs of someone coming. She reflexively changed her position on the tree branch one which she had been sitting, only to realize too late that her leg had gone numb. Lalli noticed her starting to fall, but didn't manage to catch her, not that it would have done any good: Lalli didn't have much muscle, and she was quite pudgy.

xxxx

Tuuri was starting to wonder if there was anything Big Guy could _not_ do as she examined her newly bandaged wounded shoulder.  
-How am I supposed to explain this to Onni?  
-You are all officially doing parkour. You fortunately suffered something that can be explained by that.  
She suddenly realized that she was alone in a room with Big Guy. It was the perfect opportunity to share her thoughts about Lalli, so she did.  
-Your cousin needs something he's good at in his life more than you realize. He hasn't gotten used to what comes with it quite yet, so it may not be a good idea to take it away anytime soon. As for the future, I will point that as of now, he has shown no more interest in pursuing such activities in the long term than you have. And if it can reassure you, Sigrun has been keeping an eye on him, and has yet to see anything that would make him a danger to himself or others should he actually choose to pursue a line of work that requires proficiency in fighting or weapons.  
-How would I explain _that_ to Onni? What happened to our parents and Lalli's has made him extremely prone to worrying about us each time we do something somewhat dangerous. If Lalli ends up with a job where he has a higher than usual chance of getting badly hurt…  
-It will be his choice to make as an adult, if he decides to choose this path. You and your brother can try talking it out of him if it ever happens and if you wish. If that doesn't work, the best you can do is support him. Good things to go back to can make the difference between hanging on and letting go in the worst times. In such moments, I'm sure he would rather have a supporting family than one constantly pestering him to change careers. Both you and Reynir are excused from your tutoring session tonight. Go home and get some rest, it will help you heal.  
Tuuri nodded and got off the stool on which she had been sitting:  
-I just need to get…  
Big Guy used the very tentacle that Lalli had sliced this morning, now regenerated, to open the small infirmary's door and reveal a grinning Reynir, holding both their bags and their raincoats:  
-Thought you could use a little help. And since I live in the building next-door to yours…  
Reynir helped her put her raincoat on, and she noticed it was not _actually_ hers, despite the fact that it had looked identical to it at first glance. She was about to ask Reynir whether he had mistaken someone else's raincoat for hers when she remembered what he had been working on; he had mentioned that he had yet to find a way to make the stuff look like ordinary fiber, which was the reason he was sticking to garments that were _supposed_ to have its natural texture in the meantime. She wondered if Big Guy had noticed yet. She would find out tomorrow.


	6. For the the greater good

**Warning:** Yes, I'm doing something about Tuuri's death again. Putting a trigger warning for suicide and pre-suicide thoughts to be on the safe side.

 **For the greater good**

 **Prompt:** "She died for kindness."

Why had she told Lalli she was going to bed? There were probably many things she was supposed to do, now. She remembered Mikkel telling her about the questions she would need to be able to answer in case she turned out to be sick, and suggesting that she think a little of the answers and write them down somewhere, so that they would be taken care of if the worse was to happen. She had been so convinced she would be fine that she hadn't listened. Now, she no longer remembered what the questions had been. She had planned to simply go through the quarantine as a concession to precaution, and after that enjoy the rest of the trip with the slowly healing shoulder wound being the only sign anything bad had ever happened. But she couldn't do that anymore, could she? What was supposed to happen next? Mikkel had probably told her that while she wasn't listening, as well. Maybe she should call him to ask him. No, she couldn't do that. Given the circumstances, asking him to come with her inside the office was as good as broadcasting the fact that she had started to show symptoms. Maybe she could wait until her routine morning exam. It would give her time to figure things out. She suddenly realized the real reason Mikkel had told her to think of answering those questions _during_ the quarantine: she probably wasn't going to get much time to do so _after_ it. Turning into a troll was more of a risk in some families than in others, and her family was one such family. This meant that the others could let things follow their course only for so long before she would have to die for the greater good. And even if the Icelandic ship let her on at an advanced stage, she would probably die before she could tell Onni goodbye. Sher heard a noise coming from behind the tank wall against which she was leaning. Reynir. He had effectively been locked up in the back of the tank for the last few days, and allowed to go outside only under Mikkel's supervision. She remembered their conversation just a couple of days ago, only a medical tape sealed door separating them, without their masks. That rash on her neck meant she had been contagious at the time, and that she would have condemned him as well without that door between them.

They were going to leave the tank in the morning. Sigrun was ill also, but at least with something the Icelanders would be able to help with. Reynir's security was their top priority, alongside bringing the books back. She didn't know Lalli well enough to know how he would react if an official decision to end her life early were to be made. She realized one thing would keep all these problems from happening at the same time. Keep the trek from happening with two thirds of the crew ill. Keep Reynir from risking being infected. Keep the others from having to restrain Lalli while a hard decision was carried out. She glanced at the group made of Sigrun, Mikkel and Emil sitting around the fire. Neither them, nor Lalli, who was standing guard just outside the security perimeter, seemed to notice her. She took her mask off, and ran.

It took Emil a few moments to realize that there were two sets of human tracks in front of him, yet only Lalli was supposed to be further down the path than he was. He finally found Lalli kneeling on the outer edge of the ice that had built up on the edge of the nearby sea, right where both sets of tracks ended. His first thought was that he needed to pull Lalli to somewhere safer. He came next to Lalli, and placed his hand on his shoulders:  
-Come on, you can't stay here, it's dangerous.  
Having lowered the rest of his body so his mouth would be closer to Lalli's ear, he noticed something strange about the nearby water he hadn't a few moments before. He couldn't quite tell what it was, and only had time to notice a whitish color before Sigrun and Mikkel caught up with them, the former asking what was happening. Emil told her about finding Lalli, and the strange shape in the water. Sigrun had Emil take Lalli away from the ice so she could go on it without risking it breaking under the weight of too many people. She stared for a few moments, then told Mikkel to go back to camp to get some rope on a tone that was strangely neutral coming from her. Emil was about to ask Sigrun what she had seen when his mind made a connection with the extra set of human tracks. His question came out as asking if the shape he had seen was Tuuri.

xxxx

Tuuri was dead. It had to be that. If it hadn't been hours ago that he and Lalli had been ushered into the dorm room before Emil closed the door and elected to sit right in front of it, it sure felt like it had been. All this time, Lalli had been sitting on the floor, looking tired but making no move to go to bed. Reynir remembered the sounds he had heard from the office while he was painting the rune on the tent. He had dismissed them as Kitty having a bout of restlessness, but he was now quite sure it had been Tuuri, who had elected to no answer him. Had that really happened only a few hours, possibly a much shorter time, ago? He couldn't actually ask any of the two others what was going on, and they couldn't tell him what was happening for the very same reasons. He could eventually talk to Lalli, but it probably wasn't the right time to try to ask him to come to the dream world. He wasn't sure he was going to be able to fall asleep or concentrate enough to go there anyway. Both he and Lalli had agreed to keep their mouths shut about the fact that they knew Tuuri was infected, so she could have a few extra days doing things as she wished to an extent. Having that conversation with her without letting it slip had been particularly hard. But he had managed to nudge Mikkel into telling him what would happen if Tuuri turned out to be sick, and he had made it sound like there would be time for proper goodbyes. He came to the slow realization that he and Lalli were probably being kept out of the way because things hadn't gone as planned, and the older adults were trying to sort out the resulting mess without any interference. Tears came to his eyes. He considered trying to hold them back due to the fact that Lalli didn't seem to be shedding any, but found himself unable to actually do so. He noticed Emil wasn't crying either. Maybe they had been taught some kind of trick in their army training. If there was one, he was really wondering what it was.

He didn't know how much extra time passed between the moment he had started silently crying and the moment the door was opened behind Emil, Mikkel told him something in Danish that prompted him to go out with Lalli, and switched to Icelandic to tell Reynir what he already suspected.  
-We can't have you outside while we are burning her body, unfortunately. The best I can do is let you watch from the driver's cabin. Unless you'd rather stay back here.  
He chose the driver's cabin. Of all the things that could be going through his head, he found himself wondering why she had done this so suddenly, and quickly realizing he'd never know.


	7. Diving in the sky

**Diving in the sky**

 **Story cubes**  
 **Beginning:** Boxed L, book, key.  
 **Middle:** Parachute, eye, smiling face.  
 **End:** Clock, lightning bolt, dice.

Sigrun and Emil bringing in a strange selection of books was nothing new, but how could they have missed that one of them was not a book at all? It had apparently been the hiding place for a key, whose square handle was emblazoned with a stylized L similar to the one on the metal plate above the main entrance of the nice, if not particularly big, house whose garden was the tank's current camping grounds. Looking around her, Tuuri quickly noticed that everyone else was either asleep or busy at the moment, all while remembering the house had been confirmed to be clear of trolls by Lalli when he had scouted it. Sigrun and Emil hadn't found anything in there either.

She took the key, snuck out of the tank, and went inside the house without anyone else noticing. Her best guess was that whatever the key opened would be in the same room as the book had been, so she decided to look into each room for any tell-tale signs of Sigrun and Emil having spent any amount of time in it. In one room, there was a couple meter long glass case with various objects inside it. She decided to give it a closer look, wondered how it was supposed to open, and noticed the keyhole on one of the metal-reinforced edges. She had no idea how glass that old would hold up to touch, so she reluctantly decided against trying to open it with the key. The fact that it was glass, however, enabled her to look at the objects inside it. Unfortunately, they had all been exposed to sunlight for most of the year for decades and faded, causing them to give no information beyond what they had probably been in the past. They seemed to consist of a helmet, googles, some kind of folded piece of clothing, a pair of boots, a backpack and an unfamiliar object with a dial on it. She looked at the opposing wall, which hadn't been hit by light exposure as badly and was covered in framed photos and newspaper clippings. The newspaper clippings told of a "skydiver" whose name started with L. One mentioned that they liked mystery novels. What intrigued her the most were several photos than seemed to be of a person suspended from some kind of half-dome, which itself wasn't visibly tied to anything else. The background sometimes looked like it could be the sky. One photo gave a good look at what the person was wearing, and Tuuri realized that she was looking at the gear from the glass case before it had faded. The stylized L from the key and the house entrance could be seen on the helmet, the suit's chest and the strange half-dome object from different angles depending on the photo. The person had a big smile on the lower part of their face on the pictures that's had been taken from close enough.

The sound of thunder coming from outside got her out of her reverie and made her realize that she had probably spent more time in the house that she had initially planned. She got back to the tank as fast as she could, which, thanks to the sound of the thunder alerting everyone else as well, made it still too late for her absence to not be noticed by Mikkel. That evening, they ended up playing a dice game, with a set Tuuri hadn't quite realized they had with them on the trip up to that evening. Conversation eventually turned to what Tuuri had seen, and Mikkel ended up explaining what it consisted of. Emil seemed to turn several shades paler than his usual colors at the idea, Sigrun proclaimed the Old Worlders to be more fun than what she had assumed them to be so far, and Tuuri though it would be something interesting to experience, at least once.


	8. Man over board

**Man over board**

 **Story cubes**  
 **Beginning:** Bridge, arrow, flashlight.  
 **Middle:** Magnifying glass, footprint, shooting star. **  
End:** Card, pair of masks, cell phone.

After the fact, Elias couldn't help but be intrigued by the detour they had made, which had involved approaching the coast of Silent Denmark and sacrificing a couple harpoons and lifeboats to deliver food to a group of people there. He decided to ask Jonas about it.  
-Someone apparently approved some kind of small mission in the Silent World, but there was a problem with the food supplies. They apparently used that old bridge to get there in the first place, but the thing was so damaged that it just plain collapsed after the crossed it, so they couldn't just go back where they came from to get food.  
Elias was about to ask another question when he got interrupted by Njala's voice bellowing voice:  
-Elias! I need a spare lantern from the storeroom! Now!

Elias scampered to the storeroom, only to remember he had no idea where the spare lanterns were being kept. In the midst of searching for them, he noticed two things. The first was that Ólafur's latest unpaid assistant had bailed out of his potato peeling. Elias was used to it. It wasn't the first time some star-eyed youth came aboard for "work experience", only to lose interest the second they found out that they didn't have a license to let people ashore. Njala tended to take them anyway, because she considered those trips easy fixes for the attitudes of such youths, and knew that if their boat didn't take them, some other crew was going to be the one stuck teaching them the harsh lesson. While continuing his search, he found a pile of tuna cans that were not inside a crate, as they were supposed to be. Stealing before leaving was nothing new on the part of those youths, for reasons ranging from spite to having spent all their money to get themselves to a port town and just wanting to make sure they had something to eat on their way back home. However, they usually remembered that they were going to be quarantined and tried to no steal more than what they could fit in whatever luggage they had come onboard with. Those who had changed their mind about not being paid usually went for small, but valuable items. Those who wanted to avoid starving on the way home did usually go for food, but not in such large quantities. After staring at the cans for a while and wondering what had been going through the kid's head leaving so many out in the open, he noticed that they were of the brand of which they had delivered a crate during the detour. Elias briefly considered that the crate those were coming from had been the one delivered, before remembering that he knew how much a crate full of tuna cans was supposed to weigh, and the create would have definitely felt lighter with such a large quantity of cans missing. The feeling he was onto something important started nagging him, to the point that he hardly noticed Jonas joining him in the room:  
-Elias! Njala wants to know what's taking so long.  
Elias explained, and Jonas agreed to grab the spare lantern, get it to Njala and inform her of the situation while Elias discreetly made sure that the kid wasn't simply somewhere else on the ship. In the end, the search only revealed that anyone the youth could have been with had assumed that he was with someone else.

The youth had left his bag behind. The bag contained his ID card and an address that was most likely that of the home in which he was living with his parents. Elias going to need to make a radio call as soon as the circumstances let him do so.


	9. True Ruler

**True Ruler**

 **Prompt:** "That boy, always talking, always the slave of cruelty and the friend of hope."

Emil gave the now far away still-smoking palace a glance, getting a better view of it each time he got a little further up the mountain. Being taken away from the palace itself had made sense, considering the smoke the fire had been producing. However, at the time all three of them had left, the fire had only been affecting the wing containing the archives and Emil's quarters, and hadn't justified leaving the palace grounds, let alone the city grounds entirely, on horseback. Lalli and Reynir could not explain the reason for which they had led him to this mountain and were actively keeping him from turning back each time he made a move to do so, as he didn't speak either of their languages. Emil's father's reaction to his lack of ability to learn other languages had been to give him a retinue of foreign servants who didn't speak the local language in hope to motivate him. However, practicality had entailed having a scribe who understood what he said and shared a language with some of the servants, resulting in only a little organization being necessary for everyone to know what they were supposed to do. The scribe in question wasn't with them and asking where she was seemed to be the best way to make Lalli snub him for a few moments and Reynir sniffle. This only added to the strangeness of the situation, as those two were literally the last people in the world who would go anywhere without Tuuri; Lalli was her younger cousin and _de facto_ ward, while it was quite frequent to see a given hair tie make its way from Tuuri's ponytail to the end of Reynir braid, or vice versa, overnight. Yet another strange detail was that having one of Tuuri's hair ties in his hair usually was a recipe for an entire day of Reynir getting the stink eye from Lalli. Today happened to be one of those days, yet Lalli's usual hostility towards Reynir had seemingly vanished in favor of scouting various directions pointed by him; from what Emil could tell, Reynir was the only one in their group with any idea of where they were going.

They eventually stopped at a small wood shed in the middle of a woody patch that had just enough horse tying poles for the three of them next to it. Emil was ushered inside by Lalli and Reynir, who made a few gestures that Emil understood to mean they wanted him to stay inside. Following this, Reynir went right back out. Lalli started a fire in the fireplace while Emil just watched; someone had once tried to teach him how to start a fire once, but he hadn't paid attention due to being convinced he would never need to do such a thing himself. Lalli's outfit looked a little strange due to consisting of Emil's dark riding boots and clothes consisting of drawstring pants and a shirt kept closed by a sash that might as well be sleepwear, if very nice sleepwear. The function with which the clothes came meant that there were no shoes to go with them, not even sandals or slippers, unless they were gifted to him; the person wearing them wasn't supposed to leave the bed, let alone the room in which the bed was. Only now, Emil realized what he had been expected to be doing when the fire had started, and possibly would have been, if he hadn't been appalled by the fact that someone had somehow gotten the idea that he wanted Tuuri's weird, if kind of adorable in his own way, cousin as a "toy". It had been quite obvious to Emil from the first few hours of meeting him a few years ago that Lalli was the kind of person who would never stop needing a watcher, and that Tuuri was taking on that duty in exchange for having an extra pair of hands when she needed it. Emil had once outright asked Tuuri why he was with her rather than back in their home country, only to get an amused "he's my bodyguard" in response. After what had happened just a few hours earlier, Emil wasn't quite sure she had been joking anymore. Barring the strange coughing fit that had preceded his sudden initiative to put as much space as possible between the two of them and the palace, Lalli had proven himself to be a fast runner with whom Emil had had trouble keeping up and capable of impressive acrobatics while half-dragging, half-escorting the slightly chubby royal Prince he was away from the fire. They had also somehow managed to not run into anybody not named Reynir during the escape that had turned into the gentlest abduction ever at some point and showed that Lalli knew how ride, as well. This hadn't fitted with Emil's image of Lalli on so many levels. Emil came to a realization: could the way Lalli had acted all those years have been a trick to fool people into thinking Tuuri had been sent away from her country without proper protection? Was he seeing the real Lalli for the first time? As if to prove him only half-right, Lalli suddenly closed his eyes and slapped his hands against his ears, as if to shut the world out. He next started that strange sound somewhere between a light growl and a moan that usually signaled that he _really_ wanted to be left alone and risked reacting disproportionally to anyone trying to interact with him. The moan eventually changed into a slew of barely audible words, among them Tuuri's name. It wasn't rare for Lalli to ask for Tuuri in such moments if they happened while she wasn't around. Some of the other servants had discovered, by pure chance, that putting blanket over his head and back sometimes helped calm him down if Tuuri genuinely couldn't be disturbed. The only blankets they had were under the saddles, which were one the horses outside. Emil remembered that he had been wearing a coat all this time, took it off and put it over Lalli's head:  
-You probably have a better idea of where she is than I do, and it's not like you can tell me where she is anyway, so this will have to do.  
Emil's gesture only seemed to change the growl-moaning into sobs. After multiple attempts at alternate ways to calm him down, Emil somehow ended up sitting against the wall opposite to the shed's entrance, with a person who frequently swatted hands approaching him away like flies huddled against him, still sobbing and repeating Tuuri's name over and over again. What was taking Reynir so long? Emil still didn't know what had warranted taking him to the shed in the first place. Lalli looked _very_ tired, he realized. Much more tired than himself. Maybe he needed to sleep a little. Emil remembered a childhood lullaby and started singing it.

Reynir looked at the food and other potentially useful plants he had managed to collect in his belt pouch and decided it ought to be enough to make a dinner for the three of them. He hoped that the spoiled Prince wasn't going to protest about the nature of the food, nor its quantity.  
 _Hush little baby, don't say a word  
Papa's going to buy you a little bird  
_Tuuri had always insisted that the Prince wasn't actually that bad a person, just used to the lifestyle that came with his position and oblivious to the efforts it took on the part of his servants to maintain it. But even she had had to open her eyes about the kind of person he really was when he had turned out to have requested Lalli to be his "toy".  
 _And if that little bird don't sing  
Papa's going to buy you a diamond ring  
_Just this morning, she had changed her mind back, after reading some of the foreign correspondence the Prince had received for his sixteenth birthday. Many of the people sending the Prince a letter for the very first time for the occasion had assumed that he at the very least knew the Shared Tongue, which was also the main language in Reynir's home country. The Shared Tongue being one of the three Tuuri spoke alongside her native one and the local one had made her the one translating the letters so the Prince could read them. She had shown the correspondence to Reynir despite the fact that she wasn't supposed to, and he had noticed the same thing she had. Each letter "kindly suggested reconsideration" for at least one policy that the Prince was allegedly going to put in place once he would become King. Many of the future policies mentioned were mutually exclusive with one of the others, and each country seemed to have heard only of those that would give its royalty a low opinion of the Prince. According to Tuuri, some of them contradicted the Prince's own words or were illustrative of very clear-cut positions on subjects about which the Prince had admitted to not caring at all.  
 _And if that diamond ring turns brass  
Papa's going to buy you a looking glass  
_In the middle of her observations, Tuuri had asked a strange question:  
-Reynir, what made _you_ start not liking him that much?  
-I heard that he wanted to start producing a local brand of high-end wool and stop importing it from my country. And that he hoped the people _there_ would eventually be the ones buying the wool produced _here_.  
Reynir's family was a producer of the high-end wool that was currently doing very well across the continent, and their host country was its biggest client. Such a policy would entail either ruin or having to learn a new trade at an advanced age for his parents.  
- _I_ heard from someone who's friends with a local sheep farmer that the Prince's plan was to import _even more_ wool from your country and make it cheap enough that more people could afford it. And come to think of it, it's not the first time I hear of servants that have completely different ideas about what the Prince's future plans are. And… oh no…  
Tuuri had half-dropped her face in her hand while pinching her nose. The only other time Reynir had seen her do this before had been right before telling him about Lalli being picked as the Prince's future "toy".  
-I… think whoever is behind this got me too. Taru wants to stay on his good side so… she told me to show no signs of contesting his decision about Lalli around him… to not even talk about it unless _he_ brought the subject up. He never did… and it made me _so_ mad at him… but… what if… _he_ doesn't know Lalli is his bedroom right now?  
A ringing bell had reminded them of the time. Reynir had been expected at the Prince's birthday party as part of the entertainment, while Tuuri had needed to finish translating the birthday correspondence to make as many messages as possible ready to be read by the time the Prince expected them.  
 _And if that looking glass gets broke  
Papa's going to buy you a billy goat  
_As a round of applause had congratulated the end of Reynir's party tricks, the archivist, rather than Tuuri, had come in with the translated letters on a silver tray. Reynir had decided to leave to go see Tuuri as soon as he was sure he wouldn't be missed but realized as soon as he got himself out of the party hall that he had used all his paper to perform the party tricks. Some King a long time ago had only seen the library, the archives and the paper supply room they shared only as rooms full of paper that could easily catch fire and had decided that each of them should be in a different wing of the palace. The archives had won out as the room to be in the same wing as the main royal quarters to enable swift storage and eventual consultation of official correspondence. Just as Reynir had been leaving the supply room, he had felt magic emanating from the talisman meant to signal whether Tuuri was in any kind of danger. As soon as he had smelled the faintest hint of smoke, his mind had put two and two together. Various people were making sure anyone who wasn't a professional rescuer of sorts stayed out of the entire wing. Reynir had quickly realized that only the easy ways _in_ would be guarded and ran for the side of the building that had no ground-level entrances, but a few windows and balconies on the upper floors.  
 _And if that billy goat don't pull  
Papa's going buy you a cart and bull  
_Reynir got to the balconies just in time to see Lalli jump from one of the lower balconies, holding onto a short and chubby form that tuned out to unfortunately not be Tuuri. Lalli's first reflex after recovering from the landing had been to give a quick look around him, and the sight of Reynir had seemed to irritate him much less than usual. Actually, he had seemed a little relieved to see him. He had grabbed the Prince's arm, walked toward where Reynir had been standing and used his free hand to fetch for one of the talismans Reynir was wearing as a necklace under his shirt, and lifted it to the level of Reynir's eyes. It has been the very talisman that had signaled Tuuri was in trouble earlier, now cracked to the point that the lower half looked ready to fall off the upper one. Reynir had understood and remembered. "If one falls, the other two better leave." Lalli had refused to leave without the Prince for a reason Reynir hadn't been able to work out. Reynir had a hiding place in mind, and that hiding place happened to include a way for at least him and the Prince to find out what each of them knew of the situation.  
 _And if that cart and bull fall down  
You'll still be the sweetest little baby in town_

As Reynir got close to the shed, he realized that he had left the Prince alone with Lalli and that as far as the Prince was concerned… Reynir briefly questioned how much of the situation Lalli actually understood, considering how he had passed up an extremely unexpected opportunity to escape his predicament before any of the consequences even happened. He also quickly remembered that Lalli had plenty of reasons to not have noticed that specific facet of the situation. Reynir decided to knock before coming in as a precaution. While the Prince sounded a little annoyed, Reynir recognized the gist of his words as an approval of his entrance. What he saw was far down the list of what he had been expecting to come back to. The Prince's first gesture upon seeing Reynir was to point at Lalli who was sitting next to him and mime Lalli's usual "withdrawing from the world" gesture. The Prince's coat had apparently been put to good use in that regard, in addition to giving Lalli a much-needed extra layer of clothing as the evening cold was setting in. Reynir realized how drained Lalli looked, and suddenly feared that the day's events could not be the only reason. He rushed to Lalli, kneeled next to him, and fetched for one of his necklace talismans. It took a few moments to find the one that worked as a quick medical check-up, as the threads of the handful he was wearing had gotten tangled with each other. When he lifted it to put it on Lalli's forehead, the three other talismans he was keeping in that manner came with it. Needing to concentrate to do the medical exam, he didn't notice the lower half of one of the other talismans falling off and getting picked up by the Prince. Reynir let out a sigh of relief when Lalli turned out to not be suffering any ill effects from the fire, coming down with anything serious or have any physical wounds besides the bruises that could be expected from spending a few hours riding in glorified sleepwear and boots intended for someone a little shorter and much fatter. A little food and rest would be enough to get Lalli in enough shape to get himself to their intended hiding place, where he would be able to properly rest of the mild fever he _was_ coming down with, on his own strength.

Reynir served the food he had gathered in three equal portions, using some of his sheets of paper as makeshift plates. Lalli ended up being the one among the three of them to stare at his food instead of touching it. As Reynir was working up the courage to go try getting some food inside Lalli in spite of the very real risk of getting punched in the jaw for it, he witnessed the Prince picking up one of the nuts in Lalli's "plate", peeling it and putting it into Lalli's mouth without meeting any kind of resistance. Lalli started chewing on it, and soon swallowed. This repeated a handful of times, until the Prince stared at the nut he was holding, ate it himself, and gave one of his own berries to Lalli. It took this for Reynir to realize that in the process of trying to give everyone an equal share of everything, he had given Lalli a few items he actually couldn't stand eating. The Prince, of all people, was the one correcting his mistake. One of the horses they had stolen had happened to have a canteen still attached to its saddle, which had enabled Reynir to collect some water. He gave a little to Lalli once he was done eating, then both the Prince and himself took a share. Reynir went back out to fetch more water and came back with the three saddle blankets. Reynir realized that if it hadn't been for what he had seen during the rest of the evening, he probably would have read something other than an attempt to give Lalli warmth during the night in the fact that the sleeping arrangements the Prince had fixed up for himself and Lalli involved them being huddled together. Reynir tried to not think of Tuuri and what she would have thought seeing this, as his top priority was to fall asleep so he could talk with Lalli in the spirit realm.

Concerning the fire, all Lalli had been able to figure out had been that it had started in the archives while Tuuri was in the room. Unfortunately, his magic worked in such a way that it had already been too late to save her by the time he had realized she was in trouble and Reynir had quickly figured out that it was still too early to ask more about it than he strictly needed to know. Saving the Prince, however, had been within Lalli's reach, so he had done it. When Reynir had asked him why he had gone through the trouble of saving the Prince given the circumstances, Lalli semi-reluctantly shared a set of his own memories with him, unsure how to explain by other means. Lalli had always been good about making himself scarce when Reynir and Tuuri needed to be alone. Tuuri had admitted to not being sure where he went in those moments but had decided to not worry since he always came back from wherever it was unharmed, and he probably needed a little alone time anyway. In hindsight, she probably should have paid a little more attention. Tuuri's room being right next to the archives had meant that it wasn't that far away from the Prince's either. Most servants being off work had meant that the Prince was, as well. The half-open balcony door and the half-dozen of palace cats in the Prince's room explained each other. The Prince greeted Lalli as he came into the room, and promptly went under the bed. There were a couple blankets and a pillow waiting for him there, as there had been ever since his second visit to the room. A plate with a pastry on it was soon slipped under the bed along with a few words, the Prince having guessed Lalli's favorite by offering him a different one on each of his first visits, then letting him pick one from a selection of a couple during the following ones. There hadn't really been much more to it as Lalli tended to have a nap after his snack and wake up to the Prince still chatting to the cats right around the time the coast was clear to go back to the room he shared with Tuuri. At best, he had found himself staring at the Prince a little more than before while Tuuri was working with him and to be able to tolerate looks coming from the Prince a little better than those coming from other people. The shared memories ended and Lalli spoke himself:  
-Where are you taking us?  
Reynir answered:  
-Someone I know lives in the mountains and said myself and anyone I escaped with would be welcome if I ever found myself abruptly needing to leave the palace for at least some time. My guess is that you don't plan to bring his Highness back there anytime soon.  
-You are correct. Does that acquaintance of yours have any travelling equipment or weapons? I want to take him to my country. He should be safe there. I… guess you can come if you want. Just know that what you and Tuuri were doing will have no value to anyone there, so you better be ready to earn your keep until people start wanting you around because they like you.  
-He'll have everything we need. He can also speak with both his Highness and me. It _might_ be a good idea to make him aware we are taking him to another country, and why.

xxxx

Mikkel was surprised that Sigrun didn't break her clay cup with the strength she used to slam it on the table. He couldn't do much about the reason behind it, unfortunately. News from town were bad enough that he couldn't exactly blame her for trying to get drunk badly enough to need a healer and reduce the chances of the plan being a danger to her life by getting drunk in a healer's house, his own as it happened.  
-That bunch of nobles and merchants actually did it! King's dead, his woman's dead, Prince's dead and nobody misses them because they all think they were complete jerks. Now kid's uncle is going to be made King because his brats are still little and we'll be watching each of the three brats get convinced they'll make a better ruler than the two others over the next few years.  
For someone who wasn't that much into politics, Sigrun had quite accurately summed up the reason the fire had managed to kill the main branch of the royal household while leaving the backup one intact. The King had never taken an official wife nor gotten to the "and a spare" part of the common wisdom on producing heirs. The Prince had been even less likely to go beyond the call of duty in that particular matter, and the fact that his "toy" was most likely going to be male meant that even the possibility of only one of the two children being legitimate was extremely slim. Many a female "toy", the most recent being the Prince's own mother, had produced a future King, due to such children being as good as legitimate when there were no _actual_ legitimate children. A royal throne without any competition for it was the bane of "that bunch of nobles and merchants" as Sigrun called them, or the "True Rulers" as others not-so-euphemistically called them. The royal family had been a puppet to them for centuries, any personal political agenda taking a backseat to the sum of that of that of the "council members". The lavish lifestyle the royals got to enjoy by being the nominal rulers was in reality a perpetual bribe intended to keep them happy in spite of the situation. The end result was that the royal agenda known to the public ended up being whatever the True Rulers, or at least a majority of them, had managed to agree on. However, someone ending up King from lack of other candidates tended to strike a sensitive chord with the populace; it tended to suddenly remind people who were fine with their favorite among two siblings becoming King of the fact that the same family had stayed in power for centuries and give them revolt-oriented ideas. Because of this, would-be "by default" Kings tended to be replaced by another person in the line of succession while they still held the title of Prince, always in such a way that as few people as possible would feel sorry for them. Mikkel had guessed long ago this particular Prince would go via an "accident" and Sigrun had quit her job as his weapon handling instructor upon realizing that she was getting attached to a kid who was slated for a death that she was very unlikely to be able to prevent. Those who were a liability to any plans of the True Rulers, even without realizing it, tended to end up imprisoned for spurious but believable reasons, some of which could still ruin one's life once they were out. Mikkel's thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door, that remined him that he had offered his house as a temporary refuge to some of the palace servants he had gotten to know during his very brief tenure there.

Once all three of them had stopped in front of the mountain house that looked at least a little better than the shed in which they had spent the night, Lalli hadn't as much climbed off his horse as almost fallen off it. If he hadn't been ill the previous evening, he definitely was now. Emil had managed to find a way to both hold him upright and be able to take him to the door when the door in question opened, revealing a large blond man wearing sideburns that Emil took a few moments to place:  
-Face-cancer guy!  
The man, whatever his name was, looked in his direction, only for his perpetual squint to grow in to fully open eyes.  
-You?  
Emil usually had trouble making out sentences spoken in the Southern Region accent, but a single clearly and loudly pronounced word wasn't too much trouble. A voice marked by the much easier to understand Western Region accent emerged from inside the house:  
-Hey, wait, I think I know that voice.  
Another familiar face, on which Emil was able to quickly place the name "Sigrun", showed up in the doorway:  
-Wow. Either I'm more drunk than I thought I was, or it's really you. Wait a sec… if you are here… why was everyone in town talking about the guards finding a charred body that must have belonged to someone your general size in the burned down part of the building?

xxxx

Lalli was bedridden for a couple of days with a fever, and it took about the same time for Emil to adjust to what had happened according to Reynir, Lalli and Sigrun. Spirit realm communication, which Emil knew to be only be possible between two mages, had enabled Reynir to find out what Lalli knew of the situation. Reynir had shared that alongside with his own information with Mikkel, who had shared it with Sigrun, whom Emil was able to understand. The half of a decorated metal circle that had fallen off one of Reynir's necklaces, which Emil had planned to give back to him at some point, had suddenly become very hard to part with; Reynir had said Emil could keep it if he wanted, since he still had the half tied to his necklace. Mikkel and Sigrun had agreed that going to another country where people were unlikely to recognize him sounded like a good idea. Luck had it that he already had one lined up. However, they also both considered that he should decide what he wanted to do and take the next step that best suited it. There was just one catch: they really wanted him to have his mind made up by the time Lalli would be in shape to travel again, as Mikkel could only hide them for a limited time before someone besides Sigrun became aware he had visitors. On the third morning, as Lalli was finally able to get out of bed, something resembling a long-term plan sprouted in Emil's mind. He wasn't sure how doable it was, however.

Getting Emil, Reynir and Lalli prepared to travel to the latter's country involved all three of them getting new outfits, haircuts and hairdos. Lalli's hair only needed be tied in the back of his head to make him almost unrecognizable. Emil's was cut short enough that he only needed to run his hand through it to make it neat, but long enough that it still looked nice. When it came to Reynir, the only way to conceal his characteristically poor haircut choice was to cut the braided part of the hair to the length of his bangs. Tuuri's hair tie found a new home around Lalli's extremely short ponytail. The next step was to choose weapons among Mikkel's small hidden stock. Reynir traded his visibly palace-produced knife for one a random traveler was more likely to have. Emil found a sword that suited him. Lalli tried three different bows before settling on one. Sigrun had watched his shots through Mikkel's window and let out an amazed whistle when he had used the bow he had ended up picking.

xxxx

That evening's dinner was going to be the last before all five of them left for Lalli's country. Mikkel and Sigrun knew they wouldn't be able to stay in the country very long after helping someone the True Rulers wanted dead. Lalli didn't mind having them along according to Reynir. This left one last worry in the back of Emil's mind, as Lalli had elected to sit next to him for dinner:  
-Hey, Mikkel, could you ask Reynir if he knows what the deal is with Lalli? It's not that I mind him or the help he's offering me, but I am… how can I say it… a little lost concerning him after the past few days.  
As Mikkel spoke to Reynir, Emil couldn't help but suddenly wonder if he still had that incomprehensible accent when he spoke the Shared Tongue. Reynir's explanation took some time, and Emil really hoped it would get at least a little shorter by the time it got to Sigrun. Sigrun's turn quickly came:  
-It looks like the sort version of the story is that Lalli had no engagement in the politics going on in the palace beyond besides needing to protect Tuuri if someone ever tried to attack her. He saved you the other day for no other reason than there being a fire and not wanting you to die. But apparently, the reason he wasn't involved in the politics is similar to the reason you don't expect a person born blind to get into painting. He's never been able to lie convincingly and is basically deaf to many covert means of communication. The whole thing about an honest man being the most suspicious thing in a room full of liars made it so that somewhat of an act was required to make him _look_ as harmless as he _is_ to the True Rulers. But not everything was an act either. Those episodes during which he shuts himself out of the world when it becomes too much for him are real, for instance. Reynir hasn't been told much more by Tuuri and is not on the best terms with Lalli on a personal level, so this is all he's able to share with Mikkel.  
Emil stayed silent for a few moments as he took that information in. He knew the first thing he wanted to tell Lalli, even if he didn't understand him:  
-Thank you for considering me worth saving.  
Lalli seemed to at least understand that he had told him something nice.

Mikkel suddenly spoke and Sigrun "translated" for him:  
-He's wondering if you have any idea what you want do once we've left yet.  
Emil answered truthfully:  
-I have been cooking up something during the day. At that point, I'm still wondering if it's possible.  
Sigrun pointed out the obvious:  
-We won't be able to help unless you tell us what it is.  
Emil took an inspiration before voicing his thoughts:  
-I've been taught to be ready to rule this country and I still want to do it in some way. I know that hiding in Lalli's country for some time is my best option right now, but I'd like to come back someday. Maybe under another name and appearance if it's the only way. I was thinking that I should learn some kind of trade that would give me a good reason to be travelling and thought a merchant of sorts could be a good idea. Then I realized some members of the True Rulers are merchants. Do any of you know how successful I would need to be as a merchant to become part of the True Rulers?  
Emil had just the time to see a smile form on Mikkel's face before Sigrun slapped him on the back strongly enough for his face to end up in his plate.  
-I like it. Too bad Mikkel is probably about to list about a hundred reasons it wouldn't work.  
Mikkel's mumbled sentence was a little short to actually be a hundred reasons the idea should fail.  
-What did he say?  
-Some poetic banality about those aiming for the moon and missing it hitting stars instead. I guess it's a "yes, let's give it a try" after all.

That evening, in the spirit realm, Reynir explained Emil's plan to Lalli:  
-Anything you want to say about this I can share with the others tomorrow?  
-Ask them if travelling merchants can sell pastries.


	10. Picture book

**Picture book**

 **Story cubes  
Beginning: **Tipi, house, pyramid  
 **Middle:** Building, magnifying glass, arrows pointing in all directions, padlock  
 **End:** Cell phone, abacus

Over the last few weeks, Reynir had figured out that everyone had unofficial tasks alongside their official ones, that were just as essential to keeping things running smoothly as their official tasks. Reynir's own official qualifications only enabled him to help Mikkel with the housekeeping and various seldom-needed odd jobs. Unofficially, however, it had become obvious that Tuuri sometimes just needed someone, no matter who it actually was, with whom to share various things she got excited about while reading Old World books. However, more often than not, her moments of enthusiasm happened when whoever was on "baby-sitting" duty was busy with another task, uninterested, or both. Reynir, meanwhile, was somewhat curious about Tuuri's work and could be entertained by simply watching her do it when there was nothing else for him to do. When Mikkel had realized how less often he got interrupted in his various tasks when Reynir was hanging around the office, he'd been "encouraged" to do so on a regular basis. Reynir still couldn't read Danish, so he still usually had no idea what many of the books were about until Tuuri choose to give him a very brief explanation to show him where her current train of thought was coming from. The book Tuuri was looking at today had many more pictures, some of which seemed to be photos, than usual. He eventually lost his grip on his curiosity when he noticed some kind of cone-shaped tent on one of the photos:  
-Where did people use those?  
Tuuri carefully opened the Old World atlas from the school – the one that made it all too clear that the Know World was only tiny part of the wider world – and pointed at "North America" on the page intended to help situate the various places in regards to each other. She briefly told him that those tents had been used as houses by nomadic tribes that lived there before people from "Europe" moved in and imposed a more sedentary lifestyle. Reynir was intrigued as to what had happened but decided to keep any more questions for later as to not interfere with Tuuri's work more than necessary. However, his curiosity got stirred up yet again a few pages later, this time by the picture of what seemed to be a large triangle-shaped stone structure. As the atlas was still open from before, Tuuri pointed at a place on the upper right side of "Africa", which he had previously been shown after asking where palm trees were supposed to be growing if they didn't grow in Denmark. People there had built these structures as giant tombs for their dead leaders.

A few pages later, the largest visible photo gave a good idea of what some buildings that Reynir had actually seen during the trip must have looked like before falling apart. Reynir let out an intrigued "uh" without quite meaning to when Tuuri pulled out a magnifying glass to examine the photo.  
-That general style was found just about everywhere that could afford to make new buildings when the Illness appeared. The text isn't very clear on the building's location, so I'm looking for small details that could tell me where it actually is… wow, this is a _really_ good photo! I can even make out a padlock on one of the doors! Hum… looks like it was in Denmark, so no excuse for you to ask me about yet another country.

Tuuri went through most of the rest of the book in studious silence and got near the end as Sigrun and Emil's planned time for return was approaching, as well. Reynir was starting to think Tuuri would somehow manage to go through an entire day without one of her usually daily outbursts of enthusiasm when…  
-Look at that! It's the Old World equivalent of portable radios, and the book says that they were small enough that most people could carry them in one hand! Wouldn't it be nice to have one of these rather than that enormous thing we have to sit at?  
Upon squinting, Reynir fond some resemblance between the picture Tuuri was showing him and what he would imagine a much smaller version of a radio to look like, which enabled both his nod and the "yes" he uttered to be sincere. Tuuri continued:  
-I just remembered that I once saw something a lot like it in an old book back at Keuruu. Except that the text said it was a calculator. One of the older skalds told me it was basically like an abacus, except that you could use it to do calculations on much bigger numbers. I guess it's nice, but I wonder what they would need to handle so big numbers for.  
Familiar sounds from outside signaled that it was time for them to put things away and go in the driver's cabin in case Emil or Sigrun needed to enter the office without being completely decontaminated. In the meantime, Tuuri had lost her train of thought.


End file.
